Saffron (Ribbon)
Appearance "If there's one thing I regret the most, it's probably my inability to look feminine. You know, like a normal dragon." - Saffron At first glance, to some, she might look incredibly masculine and this misconception can be attributed to a whole host of features that one would expect to be on a male rather than a female. For example, Saffron has quite a bit of scars left on her from war of Sandwing Succession. She has a few scars on her tail, one or two on her underbelly, one on the exposed part of her neck, and one that runs across her snout. Unlike most soldiers (and most Skywings just in general) who came back from the war, Saffron finds herself to be hyper conscious of these scars, and is willing to do almost anything to remove them. Any time her scars are brought up in conversation, she tries to change the topic as quickly as possible, embarrassed of the scars that she bears. Not only that, but she is unusually bulky and large, even for a Skywing. Especially for a female Skywing. This can be explained by her rather rigorous training that she underwent for almost her whole life. She finds herself ashamed of this as well, and often wishes that she could have a more lithe, graceful build like other Skywing females Saffron has amber eyes, and her scales are all the colors of the sunset. Though it is dominantly saffron and other shades of orange, there is also a bit of red. All the colors blend seamlessly into each other, similar to a sunset. History "I try not to think too hard." - Saffron Saffron's history is incredibly sad and convoluted. Sometimes she thinks her life is just one big tragedy. Though as much as her life can go terrible, she has found that it's not all bad. It all started when she was a small dragonet. As a dragonet, Saffron was incredibly spoiled due to the fact that she came from a very rich and powerful family. Naturally, her parents wanted her to continue the family business, so they regulated all of her education and training to the point where they were basically controlling her life. After some time though, Saffron couldn't take it anymore and decided to run away. She wanted to make her own decisions, no matter how bad and self destructive they were. Having nowhere else to go, she decided to live on the streets. Overtime, she learned and adapted, and found that there was only one way to survive on the streets, to murder and steal. Over the years, she got proficient at murdering and stealing and made a name for herself on the streets as one of the most dangerous criminals around. Her connections were near endless and she made a good living for herself. However, that all ended one night. She had gotten drunk, and in her drunken state, she attacked a rookie guard for no reason. Forgetting everything that she learned over the years, she drew out the time she beat up the guard, allowing a more experience guard to sneak up on her and put her down. She was captured and sentenced to jail for many years. Enough time to see other dragons come and go. During this time, she contemplated her actions, trying to find out what she wanted, to no avail. Before everyone knew it, the War of Sandwing Succession rolled around and alliances were already formed. To many of the dragons in Pyrrhia, the war seemed surreal and impossible. Death and destruction on such a scale between dragons had not been seen before at any other point in the past. It seemed like a bad dream. Running low on troops to send to the front lines, Scarlet put into place an act that would immediately draft all Skywing prisoners into the war in special penal squadrons. Without any formal training and often sent without any proper equipment or weapons, these squadrons came to be known as the "Meat Shields", referencing their poor fighting capability and tendency to be used in questionable war tactics. By some blind luck, by some flip of the coin, Saffron instead got placed into special forces training, where her physical abilities were tested and pushed to their limits. Despite how brutal and unforgiving her training was, for the first time in her life, she felt she had some purpose to continue. Some greater cause to fight for. So despite the great physical pain she was put through, she continued and continued with joy. A few years passed and eventually, she was grouped up with other dragons to form special task groups. The two dragons that she found herself grouped up with were two curious Skywings named Raven and Phoenix. Phoenix was the medic of the team, and Raven was the tactician. During her first meeting with them, being her short tempered self, she attacked Raven, who was insulting Saffron on her behavior. Coming dangerously close to killing Raven, her own teammate, she was disciplined to a ridiculous extent. Swearing revenge on Raven, Saffron begrudgingly worked together with Raven and Phoenix, waiting for an opportunity to make Raven pay. However, as the days passed and she went on more missions, she actually grew to like Phoenix and Raven. She liked Phoenix a lot (maybe a bit too much) and still distrusted Raven, but in general, they all got along well and quickly rose through the ranks as one of the most reliable squads out of the ones that were formed that fateful day. However, in a top secret suicide mission, tragedy struck. That day, they were assigned the mission of killing the head General of the Seawing military and the Mudwing military, which would destabilize the whole Seawing and Mudwing chain of command, granting the Skywings the ability to launch multiple attacks while the Seawings and Mudwings were confused. Of course Saffron complained about the mission, claiming that it was a nigh impossible feat. However, Raven insisted that they go on this mission, claiming it would practically win the war. Raven reassured them that if anything did go wrong, he would be there with a contingency. Of course, from the get go of the mission, everything started to go awry quickly. Within the early stages of the mission, they had to abandon Raven due to him being captured during the infiltration. This put the guards on edge, and security was heightened. Inexplicably, while they were sneaking, they were ambushed by Seawing troops. Backed against a wall and with no way to escape, Saffron and Phoenix fought the soldiers. In the heat of battle, Phoenix was killed in between two waves of soldiers. Overcome with grief, Saffron gave up and turned herself in. With Phoenix dead and Raven missing (probably being tortured for information), Saffron was thrown into a cell in the Summer palace. Almost immediately after being placed in a highly guarded cell for later interrogation, Saffron attempted to kill herself by tearing her throat, but was stopped by the guards. Not long after, she was sent to an interrogation chamber, where she was subject to brutal torture. However, being a proud soldier of the Skywings, her pride was too bloated to make the conscious decision to break. After weeks of torture, she was simply stored in a cell as a bargaining chip for the Seawings. Arguably, this was a much worse fate than being tortured near constantly. She was left with almost no interaction for weeks at a time, leaving only her thoughts to keep her company. She thought almost exclusively about Phoenix, her thoughts flooded with guilty and self loathing thoughts. She beat herself up every day, blaming herself for the death of Phoenix, not noticing that she was starting to waste away. However, one day, she reached an epiphany. It wasn't her that killed Phoenix, but in fact it was Raven who sent them to die. She didn't have any proof, but always thought that everything about the mission was too convenient. Raven had to be scheming with the Seawings. Eventually, the Skywings launched an invasion on the Summer Palace, and in the chaos, Saffron broke out of her cell and escaped. Just before she escaped, she saw Raven, and they both locked eyes with each other. Then, without a word, Raven took off and flew back to the Skywing Kingdom. Too mentally and physically exhausted, Saffron couldn't bring herself to pursue Raven, and instead flew away. She didn't know where she was going, or why she was going there, but she felt that she had to just escape. Escape from everything. After a few days time, she found herself in a town called Possibility. Wanting to escape her old life, Saffron settled down and spent her days doing odd jobs and drinking her heart out, trying to forget her past. As the months went by, eventually the war ended and the continent saw a massive shift of power. Noticing the changes to the world around her, Saffron decided to get her life in order and start anew. Having no experience in any trade and no pay from the Skywing military, Saffron turned to being a maid for a rather rich family on the outskirts of Possibility. This is where she met and eventually befriended a small Sandwing dragonet named Dust, who seemed eerily familiar to her in a way she can't quite place. Every day, she sees Dust off to school and is there to greet him with a smile whenever he gets back. Every day, Saffron tells tales about the fantastical adventures of a brave Skywing soldier to entertain Dust. Dust always seems to be enraptured by the tales and always demands more; and Saffron is always happy to oblige. Personality "If you want a tip, don't get to know me. Not only am I strange, but you never know when I'll become straight up toxic. Especially around liquor." - Saffron Throughout her entire life, Saffron has been slowly changed by the experiences that she has been through, so it only makes sense that her now is a completely different person from her in the past. However, despite the fact that she seems to have changed, she actually retains a lot of traits from her past, and will often revert to her old self when confronted with the past. Personality in the past Back when she was younger and dumber, Saffron was a lot more rebellious. Often, Saffron would go against the law and the wishes of others for the sole reason of disobeying them. This is because when she was younger, her parents controlled almost every aspect of her life, practically robbing her of her free will. To compensate for this, when Saffron ran away, she would disobey the law and others as much as possible. This a major factor in why she became a criminal in the first place, though necessity also had a small part to play. Free to make decisions for herself and chose her own path, it's only natural that she always chose the wrong direction and made the wrong call. Having never been taught in how to make good decisions, her decisions tended to lean towards the self destructive and criminal kind. She used to drink and used to drink alcohol almost every second of the day. Whenever she didn't have a cig in her mouth, you were guaranteed to find a bottle there instead, and when you didn't see either, she was probably killing and robbing to get some. She was objectively terrible in almost every way, a kind of irredeemable scum of the Earth that you would only find in a city. Could you blame her though? A great deal why she did that because she simply didn't have any other way to deal with her problems. It was as if she knew her life was going nowhere fast and her only reaction was to drink and smoke to forget about it. That being said, she was actually a miserable and introspective kind of person. Whenever she wasn't committing crimes, she actually spent a lot of time by herself, moping. She would loathe and hate herself for ever running away in the first place, and beat herself up for being the way she was. During the early days of her time on the streets, she regretted everything. However, as time wore on, she grew to accept that that was simply how the world worked. She adopted a mindset of "whatever happens, happens," and grew to become apathetic about the people she killed and the years she wasted. In spite of her position, she is actually quite intelligent and while she isn't a genius philosopher, she spends more time thinking about life then any criminal should or would. This is due to her short upbringing and her education, which was rigorous and challenging, as typical for children of her status. Despite all of this, Saffron managed to keep a hot headed and tough exterior. She is incredibly hostile, often making snide remarks and taking shots at other people. She gets angered easily, and will often launch into fighting with minimal thought for the consequences. Most of the time, she gets punished severely, but she never seems to learn her lesson and continues to start fights with other dragons as if that was the only thing she knew. To say that Saffron is a sociable and friendly dragon would be an absolute lie, but as you get to know her, she starts to grow slowly more trusting of you. She starts to throw less insults your way and maybe even starts to strike up friendly conversations. However, this is all a front. At her core, Saffron doesn't trust anyone with her true feelings. She feels lonely all the time, and she acknowledges that. In order to fill in her loneliness, she puts up a front so she can feel like she belongs. However, she keeps all of her insecurities and true feelings bottled up. Not a single dragon knows what she really thinks about anything, and she plans to keep it that way. To call her loyal to her friends would also be a lie. She has seen good friends come and go and die over the years, and because of that, she maintains no loyalty to anyone but herself. However, there has came an exception to that in the form of Phoenix, one of her partners. While she might not seem the type, Saffron is incredibly conscious about her image, especially when it comes to her standing in society. Believe or not, Saffron is actually insecure about a whole host of things, and to hide this, she becomes overly agressive and irritable. Personality in the present In the present, Saffron comes off to be to be pretty amiable and approachable. She's actually quite friendly, and will often strike up a conversation or two with shop owners and strangers during her daily errands. Because of this, she's actually quite well known around Possibility, but no one really knows her past. Saffron has grown to be a very motherly character, something she never expected to really become. Now that she has tot ale care of Dust, she has grown more and more attached to him in a way that she can't quite explain. Now that she has a lot more time on her hands to think, she spends a great deal of it ruminating about the past and what she was like in the past. More often than not, she lets her past mistakes influence her decisions in the present. Wherever she goes, the burden of her past weighs heavily on her and the decisions she makes. That being said, whenever she comes into contact with a bit of her past, her reaction is almost always irrational and abnormal. When confronted with her past, she'll make decisions say things she would never say otherwise, as if her past was slowly changing herself back into the dragon she was. She might become irritable and hotheaded again, she might shout, she might cry, she might kill. Even though she is very much a changed dragon, the past still has a strangle hold on her. Abilities Category:SkyWings Category:Females Category:Content (RibbonRaptor) Category:Characters Category:Work In Progress Category:Occupation (Soldier) Category:Occupation (Criminal) Category:LGBT+